Optical interconnects are increasing in popularity because of their performance potential with lower susceptibility to electromagnetic interference, low power consumption, and small capacitive effects. One of the simplest and most widely used optical interconnects for digital data transmission is the backplane system, which is used in network routers, servers, and multiprocessor calculations, among other things. On a backplane, an optical interconnect can “multi-drop” to serve multiple devices connected to the optical interconnect. At each “drop” there is an optical channel tap that can connect to a device. Some optical interconnects include multiple channels that occupy relatively large amounts of space on backplanes, which contributes to overcrowded backplanes.